Wonder City Stories II #34

A Little Bird Told Me

It was 3 am and, as usual, I was awake.

My internal clock has been skewed from normal since I buried myself here. We tried to compensate with real sunlight being piped in via fiber optics for my "outdoor" spaces (the greenhouse, the pool, the little forest-jungle area that used to hold the original builder's mutant human-eating plants) and complicated ambient light sources that changed according to the time of day and, more recently, according to the weather outside. But I'm only willing to go so far with, say, climate control, so I don't get seasons, I don't get real breezes, I don't get a lot of the true outdoor experience. Plus, there are the meds, which can make me sleepy or wide awake, depending on what I need to be able to do. If the worst side effect of all this is that my sleep cycle is just a little bizarre? I'm very grateful.

One of the best things to happen in recent years has been the explosion of the Internet, and, in particular, of text-based social media. I often can't watch online videos for the same reason I limit my television-watching -- though the odd cat or dog doing something adorable is certainly welcome, and I became a die-hard fan of Maru and his Internet cousins when my Great Dane, Liza, died last year. (I'm still not ready to get a new dog, no matter what my therapist Pearl says.) In any case, Twitter is one of my favorite news sources, since newspaper sites are often too busy and unpredictable in terms of popups and photos and other strange additions.

Also, in the very rare event that I become a fan of someone or something, I can often follow events on Twitter.

Like, um, It's a Wonderful House.

First, I read this:

HereBoy Simon Canis
Whose turn is it for dishes this week? #IaWH #dishwashing

And all I could think was Oh, no, I know where this is going.

So it went. And I was trapped, as surely anyone who has ever been trapped reading someone being wrong on the Internet at an ungodly hour of the morning when she had to work the next morning.

TomTheTruck Tom Nguyen
Whose do you think it is? #IaWH #dishwashing

JeshriPatel Rajeshri Patel
@BrandNameMan, have you ever learned to do dishes? It's not that hard. We have a dishwasher after all. #IaWH #dishwashing

TinLizzie Tin Lizzie
OMG SO DISGUSTING CANNOT FIND THE SINK. #IaWH #dishwashing

HereBoy Simon Canis
Dude, we know you're awake. #IaWH #ICanHearYouBreathing

BrandNameMan Brandon deJong
'Sup? #IaWH

TomTheTruck Tom Nguyen
DISHES. #IaWH #dishwashing

JeshriPatel Rajeshri Patel
DISHES. #IaWH #dishwashing

TinLizzie Tin Lizzie
DISHES. #IaWH #dishwashing #IAmNotYourMom

HereBoy Simon Canis
Seriously, how do you survive on your own without drowning in your own filth? #IaWH #TrashHouseBoys

BrandNameMan Brandon deJong
Get off my case. If u want em done so bad, do em urselves. #IaWH #GetAMaidForThat

JeshriPatel Rajeshri Patel
That was not the agreement. You signed the agreement too. #IaWH #ContractsRBinding

BrandNameMan Brandon deJong
What r u goin 2 do, sue me? Simone alredy threatnd that for the name thing #IaWH #Trannies

HereBoy Simon Canis
Sorry to see that spelling at a first grade level is beyond you. #IaWH #TheStupidItBurns

JeshriPatel Rajeshri Patel
'Simone' did not; the producers told you it could be a legal issue, which it could. #IaWH #Transbashing

TinLizzie Tin Lizzie
Which is all BESIDE THE POINT. Point being: DISHES. #IaWH #dishwashing

TomTheTruck Tom Nguyen
Yes, thanks, Liz. #IaWH #BackToYouBob

BrandNameMan Brandon deJong
Speaking of suing @TinLizzie is it true ur parents r talking to tabloids? #IaWH #slander

JeshriPatel Rajeshri Patel
Ignore him, Lizzie. He's ignoring us. #IaWH #WeLiveWithAnAsshole

TomTheTruck Tom Nguyen
WTF is your problem, man? How did you survive a frat w/o getting beat down? #IaWH

BrandNameMan Brandon deJong
Dunno whats wrong w/u ppl; my brothers like me. #IaWH #SUPes

I had to stop and look that one up: Sigma Upsilon Pi, or SUPes, the first paranormal fraternity. Membership: 97% white men.

TinLizzie Tin Lizzie
The creep was part of his frat at Penn State. That's why they're all buddybuddy. #IaWH #StalkerFace

HereBoy Simon Canis
The creep? #IaWH #CluelessInWC

JeshriPatel Rajeshri Patel
His camera guy. #IaWH #StalkerFace

TomTheTruck Tom Nguyen
Makes alot of sense now. #IaWH #BandOfAssholes

BrandNameMan Brandon deJong
At lest some1 appreciates good jokes. none of u do. #IaWH #HatersGonnaHate

HereBoy Simon Canis
Let's just say your humor lacks sophistication. And manners. #IaWH #WhatHumor #RudeJerks

TinLizzie Tin Lizzie
Leaving aside his sad little bromance, DISHES. #IaWH #dishwashing

JeshriPatel Rajeshri Patel
The kitchen is beyond disgusting. I saw something crawling in there. #IaWH #BugsInTheNight

TomTheTruck Tom Nguyen
That was @BrandNameMan after last night's bender. #IaWH #ILiveWithALush

BrandNameMan Brandon deJong
I handel my liquer better than you @TomTheTruck. #IaWH #JackDaniels #Tequila

HereBoy Simon Canis
Jesus, I can't look at this spelling anymore. DID you graduate from college, @BrandNameMan? Or did you Photoshop your diploma? #IaWH #MyPoorEyes

BrandNameMan Brandon deJong
PENN STATE BEAVER WOOOOOOO #IaWH #PennState #psu #nittanylions

JeshriPatel Rajeshri Patel
...You have GOT to be shitting me. #IaWH

TomTheTruck Tom Nguyen
I know PennState has a bunch of campuses. #IaWH #psu

TinLizzie Tin Lizzie
It's out near Pittsburg per GoogleMaps. #IaWH #Useful

HereBoy Simon Canis
Beaver? Really? Really? #IaWH #gobsmacked

BrandNameMan Brandon deJong
PENN STATE BEAVER BASEBALL GO LIONS WOOOO #IaWH #PennState #psu #nittanylions

JeshriPatel Rajeshri Patel
Notice he spelled all that perfectly? #IaWH #WhyAmINotSurprised

TomTheTruck Tom Nguyen
He's wasted again. I can hear him singing upstairs. #IaWH #ILiveWithALush

HereBoy Simon Canis
I can hear him singing WHEREVER I AM IN THE HOUSE. #IaWH #WolfEarsSometimesSuck

TinLizzie Tin Lizzie
Fuck this. I need to cook. My turn is coming out of the next rotation, ok? #IaWH #dishwashing #FedUpToTheTeeth

HereBoy Simon Canis
We shouldn't give in. He'll never do the dishes if we do. #IaWH #dishwashing #AntiJerkEnabling

TomTheTruck Tom Nguyen
No one can really be this much of an ass, can they? Are they paying him to be like this? #IaWH #paranoia

HereBoy Simon Canis
Probably. #IaWH #ProducersAreGhoulsAndCannibals

Just at that point, my email went ding, and I saw it was my sister Reesy. The idea of Reesy actually emailing me got my attention; she says she hates email and texting and, basically, everything that's comfortable for me, and always wants to talk on the phone. I minimized my Twitter window and flipped over to email.


Renata,

Can barely type on this thing because I am crying so hard. Don't know if you saw, but Yanaye Smallwood was found dead down at the river. You remember her? She was Audra's bestie from kindergarten on. She went away to college, but came back for grad school, and she was going to graduate next year her mama said with a PhD in sociology. She was one of your people, R, did you know that? She could breathe underwater or something like that, but she never got involved in spandex nonsense. She and Audra have been tight the last couple of years again. Audra is finally asleep in her room I made her stay she was so broken up.

But Rennie I am SO ANGRY. The police/newspapers are saying Yanaye was an addict and a prostitute and she was no such thing. They are saying it because SHE IS BLACK you know it. Audra says Yanaye fell and broke her back a few years ago but didn't break it all the way, but has been in terrible pain since. Audra says she was on vicodin then oxy but was switching to smack cause the doctors stopped prescribing for her and oxy is harder to get in WC. But she's not an addict the way they mean and would never be a prostitute!!!!

I am so angry and A is angry and what can we do about it? I thought of you though Rennie. You know so many people and maybe Ruth could say something to someone and make them stop saying it. Her mama is such a mess over it I am going to visit tomorrow, don't know what I will cook yet but at least that gives me something to do. Please tell me you will try and I can tell her mama that and maybe she will feel better.

Love,
Reesy

I remembered Yanaye: beautiful and brilliant, smart as a whip with a mouth to match. I had seen photos and heard Audra talk about her, and from Audie's mind I'd gotten a flavor of the girl and then the woman. Of course, I knew nothing about the woman's life -- despite Reesy's assertions, one can never know what someone might do, and there's no shame -- despite much jabbering to the contrary -- in turning to the sex industry if that's the only place you can get paid. I knew, for instance, that my sister LaShawna had been a stripper for a while in her twenties -- though I knew that Reesy and Mama didn't know about it. It was how LaShawna had put food on the table for her children and paid her rent for four years.

But I could think of one woman who might be interested in getting to the bottom of it. When I looked at the clock, it was nearly 5, and I just gave up on the idea of sleeping before my client came in at 9. I wrote a careful email to Suzanne Feldstein. On her "Feldspar" blog, she'd been covering the murders down by the riverfront, and had been systematically deconstructing the police's lazy assertions that they were mob killings. I thought she was just the woman for the job of rooting out the truth.